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Mornington Crescent.

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Anna Raccoon on September 30, 2014

Shall we have a quick burst of Mornington Crescent to lighten the atmosphere? The rules, naturally are known only to me, the winner will be the person who gets the most wrong answers, Sean Connery won’t be allowed to enter, and neither will Willie Rushton. It will be as incomprehensible as ever.

Q.1 What happens if you don’t pay your debts?

Q.2 What happens if you contravene regulations?

Q.3. What’s the quickest way to get your hands on three quarters of a million quid?

Stephen Geffin has been playing the game with gusto. He owned the Happyvale Hotel. He filled it full of the sort of people who don’t recoil with horror when their feet stick to the carpet in reception. Or maybe they couldn’t unstick themselves to leave.

Camden Council gave him £750,000 at the rate of £130,000 a year to keep them stuck to the carpet. He did, they were.

In 2012, the Highbury Corner magistrates court fined him £4,980 in respect of a number of cockroaches and some sewage that was stuck to the carpet too – no mention of the residents.

He didn’t do anything about it – but the Department of Works and Pensions went on paying him £130,000 a year.

Eventually in 2014, Highbury Corner magistrates court fined him another £20,000 after a new inspection found mice stuck to the carpet as well.

He didn’t do anything about it – but the Department of Works and Pensions went on paying him £130,000 a year.

In desperation, Camden Council took over the running of the hotel and did the repairs themselves.

Finally, the Department of Works and Pensions stopped paying him and gave the rent money to the council instead.

This morning, bailiffs appeared and seized televisions, computers and anything else they could find to pay off a debt of £7,700. People had to run around finding cash – because naturally the bailiffs wouldn’t take a cheque.

Not from Stephen Geffin, stupid – you really don’t know how to pay this game do you?

From Camden Council – Stephen had been underpaid £7,700 in rent arrears by the Department of Works and Pensions – and they forgot to turn up in court, so he got his enforcement order to seize – the Council’s goods. The council’s assistant director of finance eventually emerged, arriving with over £7,671 in grubby pound notes to hand to the enforcement officer…and retrieved the Council’s computers and TVs.

Mr Geffin is believed to still owe £7,542 and a victim surcharge of £225 from his last court case.

A game that is only ever won by policy wonks who have no responsibility for the money they hand out! I assume the denizens of this pit (I refuse to consider them residents) were perfectly happy to go along with this fiddle in exchange for the ‘free’ roof over their heads. So this chancer was able to game the system knowing the council would do anything other than shut him down – where would they put the dross thus made homeless – and so kept paying other peoples money until they were forced to act. I fully expect this mutt will be back in action soon, it’s not like there is any collective memory or sense of responsibility in Camden after all!

As I always used to say (to students and anyone else who cared for my wisdom) when appearing in court the most important thing is neither having mastered ones brief or having an answer to your opponents case but making sure that you have the right court on the right day and at the right time. Do that and you are halfway to a result. Fail to attend and you will fail.

I shall start a campaign to have Morning Crescent added to the standard UK Monopoly board. For far too long owning the ‘oranges’ was a sure way to win, and make a fortune, but now it appears we need a further entire street set adding….as far across the board from JAIL as possible. We might rename ‘GO’ as the ‘DWP’ while we’re at it…and we wouldn’t be the only ones…’at it’. Maybe our new additional row of streets could include Kingston Road, Stockton-on-Tees, which whilst not in London could be annexed by Walford Square-innit?

Come on people, get on Twidduuuurrrr , and DEMAND that Waddingtons add a GOLD coloured set to the board.

Hi Anna Totally off the above topic I see Dave Lee Travis’s sentence has been referred to the attourney generals office as too lenient. Four complaints were received on the day of sentence. It seems that some people think that he and his wife have not suffered enough. Is it allowed to present a complaint to the AG complaining about the complaints ( I hope you get my meaning ), or could a petition be started asking that these poor people are left alone? Thanks Carl